AMSTERDAM.- How does one live at the end of the world? Is it possible to envision a world without racism? And what would be required to create such a world?

Minor Music at the End of the World is a stage adaptation in three movements based on writer and scholar Saidiya Hartman’s acclaimed essays, The End of White Supremacy and Litany for Grieving Sisters. The texts draw inspiration from W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Comet, a speculative short story written in the aftermath of the 1918 global pandemic and imagining the end of the world.

The collaboratively developed stage performance explores the possibility of Black life at the end of the world and in the wake of racial capitalism and white supremacy. Against this complex and layered backdrop, Minor Music conveys an ongoing series of catastrophes that converge at this critical inflection point—among others, the arrival of Africans in New York City, the first slave auction in lower Manhattan, the precarity of Black life, global pandemics, and environmental catastrophes that make life seemingly unlivable. In doing so, it provokes a series of penetrating questions about Black life at the end of the world and the new social formations that arise in its wake.

“Minor Music excavates the underlife of New York City, including the history of Dutch slavery, insurance and shipping. New York became a critical financial center of the slave trade and plantation slavery. The remains of this history are inscribed in the landscape of the city. Presenting the world premiere of Minor Music with Hartwig Art Foundation in Amsterdam—New York’s historical sister city—holds deep personal and historical significance for me.” —Saidiya Hartman

Directed by Sarah Benson, Minor Music at the End of the World features a film by Arthur Jafa, lead performances by actor André Holland and actor/sonic movement artist Okwui Okpokwasili, and artistic interventions by artists Precious Okoyomon and Cameron Rowland, under the executive production of Tina Campt and Beatrix Ruf (Director, Hartwig Art Foundation). Together with Hartman, this ensemble of artists transforms her original essays into a site-specific performance in three movements:

Movement I: The End of White Supremacy—Featuring Andre Holland

Movement II: Dead River—Featuring Okwui Okpokwasili, with Bria Bacon, Audrey Hailes, and AJ Wilmore

Movement III: The World is Dead—film by Arthur Jafa

“At the heart of Minor Music is a powerful spirit of collective creation—bringing together a constellation of celebrated artists and combining literature, film, installation art, movement and sound into a singular stage experience. Collaborating with Saidiya Hartman and her exceptional team of creators to bring her influential writings to life through this evolving and deeply collaborative process has been an extraordinary journey—one that continues to unfold. Hartwig Art Foundation is honoured to present the world premiere at ITA in Amsterdam.” —Beatrix Ruf, director Hartwig Art Foundation

Amsterdam 750

The years 2024–2025 mark a milestone in the long-standing historical connection between New York and Amsterdam. Four hundred years ago, in 1624, Dutch colonists founded New Amsterdam on the island of Manahahtáanung—the ancestral home of the Lenape people now known as Manhattan. This event led to the displacement and oppression of Indigenous peoples that predates English colonisation.

As Minor Music premieres in Amsterdam this year, the city also commemorates its 750th anniversary—an occasion that invites reflection. The city and its former sister city New Amsterdam share complex and contested histories marked by trade, colonisation and slavery. These histories have profoundly shaped communities and continue to resonate in both metropoles across the Atlantic today.

Background

Minor Music was initiated by a staged reading of Hartman’s The End of White Supremacy by André Holland at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, which later evolved into a multidisciplinary performance and film project. Developed with the support of The Princeton Collabatorium for Radical Aesthetics and artists Precious Okoyomon, Okwui Okpokwasili, Arthur Jafa, the project was commissioned by Hartwig Art Foundation with workshops and performances in Ostia, Italy and The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York. It culminated in an invited rehearsal at BAM in 2024 and will premiere in Amsterdam in October 2025 with new material.